How to Find the Perfect Sales Consultant

A company is only as good as its people. Finding qualified candidates for your firm, especially ones which directly impact your bottom line, such as salespeople, can be laborious. While traditional methods such as headhunting and job advertising can provide plenty of leads when searching for new sales consultants, they are generally pricey and flood your recruiting lines with a lot of people who just aren’t good fits.

Fortunately, some new technology tools have opened up new ways of finding a sales consultant for your company. Here are a few tips for picking out the right candidates.

Social Media

With the number of profiles on social media websites continuing to grow, the practice of social recruiting has never been more relevant to your search for the right sales consultant. Currently, LinkedIn is perhaps the best tool when it comes to testing the waters. It not only allows you to post your job openings and accumulate interest, but also connect with the people you know, current clients, and others connected to the industry. More importantly, it allows you to launch discussion groups on a particular topic in the field for which you’re looking. This is a great way to find people who are actually interested in the job, and gauge their communication skills and professionalism.

Once you’ve found a few candidates, review all other social media profiles of those candidates to ensure they make a good fit before bothering to call them in. Google and Pipl search engines are your best friends. Use them to locate Facebook, Twitter, and anything else for a few first impressions. In addition, be on the lookout for discrepancies between what you’ve been told in discussions and what you find on profiles. Also, realize that your own level of information exposure and responsiveness throughout social media can have just as much of an effect on a consultant’s desire to work with your company as theirs has on your desire to hire them. It’s a mutual exchange.

Aptitude Testing

When you’re ready to bring people in for interviews or have made a new hire, use aptitude testing to determine they have the necessary skills to do the job required. For example, the assessment we use at Asher Strategies measures eight different personality traits and overlays them on a chart highlighting specific ranges within each trait where success has been proven for the relevant position. This takes a lot of the guesswork out of hiring.

Note: having a great aptitude for sales doesn’t meant mean anything if a sales consultant isn’t a match for your company’s culture. Before making a final decision, allow candidates to sit in on a sales meeting or staff lunch to determine how they interact with the rest of the team.

When all is said and done, social recruiting and aptitude testing are a step above traditional job advertising and headhunting, and should allow you to find the perfect sales consultant with the right skill set and personality for your company.